At the Pitt face

HE is better known for his forays into Africa with his celebrity wife Angelina Jolie.

So it is a surprise to learn that Brad Pitt has been visiting an urban renovation project in northern Spain.

The famous American actor took a day out of his summer holidays in the south of France to visit Aviles, in Asturias, where a 45 million euro project, designed by celebrated architect Oscar Niemeyer, is being built on the site of a former steel works.

Fascinated by architecture, he took a tour of the site that includes a 1000-seat auditorium, cinema complex and shopping centre.

A fan of the architect, who designed the capital of Brazil, as well as the UN headquarters in New York, Pitt is said to be thinking of investing in the scheme due to open next year.

“He is interested in supporting the project,” Aviles’s Mayor Pilar Varela explained. “Both from its cultural aspects as well as its architectural design.”

Fascinated by architecture, he took a tour of the site that includes a 1000-seat auditorium, cinema complex and shopping centre.

Local officials hope it will revive Aviles the way the opening of the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim museum helped transform the Basque city of Bilbao from a rusty industrial backwater into a cultural capital over a decade ago.

Pitt was especially interested in the aspects of the project aimed at boosting environmental sustainability, said Varela.

The seaside town was heavily industrialised, but fell into decline as the steel industry waned in the second half of the 20th century.

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